Damnation
by Raziel the Selkie
Summary: Thresh watched his young charge with morbid fascination. He hadn't expected things to turn out as well as they did, though now he had Varus as his vassal by his side, to inflict destruction, pain, and terror upon the other Champions, the specter began to laugh endlessly, the dungeon corridors echoing and reverberating his laughter like a curse.
1. Chapter 1

**Damnation**

The first thing he noticed was the damp cool air. The sound of water dripping somewhere in the distance was the next thing that registered in Varus's senses, before he realized another important thing. He was naked, with only a bare sheet protecting his modesty. He then figured that he was in the Spartan style bedroom of someone—but who? The bed was plain and the room unfurnished, with nothing indicating the personality of the person who owned the room. Varus sat up in the bed, trying to reorient his senses, though it felt like he was drugged into a stupor. A blinding headache pierced his head, pulsing and throbbing, while beads of sweat on his body alternatively flashed hot and cold. So what Varus deduced from the situation was that he was taken into someone's bed, drugged, and the cold possibility of having done things that he surely would have regretted later resurfaced. Was he an unwilling participant in someone's lust-filled hunger?

Varus didn't know if something had transpired between himself and the person who the bed belonged to. He tried to get up and put his feet on the stony cold floor, though he heard the sound of footsteps approaching him. Varus sat up, and then noticed that the Chain Warden entered inside the chamber. His heart plummeted immediately. What was the Chain Warden planning to do to him? And how did Varus end up in his bedroom, of all people? The memories of the day before were a blur, and when Varus tried to recollect anything, the headache only pulsed even more.

Thresh roughly grabbed Varus by his brown ponytail, jerking him awake into pained consciousness. Varus, however, didn't let out a cry or a grunt of pain, but allowed himself to be manhandled by the taller specter. While Thresh dragged Varus out of the bedroom, Varus suddenly realized that he was inside a dungeon. Darkness infiltrated every corner, and Varus shivered when he sensed rats prowling amongst the dust and bones of the place. Varus couldn't quite see clearly enough, though he had a premonition that things were going to get much, much worse for him.

"Where are you taking me?" Varus said with a kind of resignation that certain prisoners had when they realized that it was over for them. The least that Varus could do was take it with dignity. However, Thresh only pulled harder on Varus's hair and dragged him into a small chamber where chains interlinked everywhere like an intricate chain of spiderwebs. While passing by, however, Varus noticed the prisoners that Thresh kept within his perfectly constructed dungeon—emaciated men and women with various scars slashing across their body, though the shadows didn't let Varus see quite clearly enough, Varus swore he saw a man with gouged out eyes or a woman with a sewed mouth and a long scar slashing across her face into a morbid perpetual grin.

Once they were in the chain webbed room, Thresh threw Varus among the chains. Varus knew that he should fight back and resist, though he had been drugged with something that made his movements slow, sluggish.

"You're in my domain now, Arrow of Retribution," Thresh said, and gestured wide with his gauntleted hands to the room that they were in. "Please enjoy your stay as much as you can."

Varus stiffened at this, before looking around dazedly. "What are you going to do to me?"

If Thresh could grin, his visage would've worn a nasty smile full of ill intent towards the archer.

"There are so many things that I could do to you. I know the right places to cut, which limbs and tendons to sever. I know several torture methods that will leave the prisoner in the utmost agony while still clinging onto full awareness of the horrors that I inflict upon them. I can make them scream. As a formality, I ask them to introduce themselves before the blood they'll be choking on will keep me from hearing it. Ah, but we're familiar with one another Varus, rather intimately, so there is no need for an introduction. I think it's best that I start my work immediately."

In a jangle of chains, Thresh then lifted his kurasigama in the glint of the paltry light that was allowed through the lantern that Thresh always carried on his person, which bore the lamentations of souls in eternal torment within. Then, almost casually, Thresh then said, "Do you know a particularly fun method of torture created by the Ionians? It's called ling-chi, or death by a thousand cuts. I can cut five hundred times on a person without them dying."

The scythe part of the krasigama was spun on its chain, and Thresh lashed out with the first cut by digging into Varus's shoulder first. A sharp pain lanced through Varus's body as the cut was made cleanly into his body. But Varus didn't cry out in pain, merely accepted this punishment with resignation. He wouldn't indulge in the game of a madman.

"You're bleeding…how wonderful," Thresh crooned to Varus as he continued to slash at Varus with his kurasigama, inflicting more cuts upon the archer that opened up fresh wounds and pain. Yet Varus still remained silent, so Thresh continued to carve and slice into Varus's body with these cuts onto his body. Thresh seemed determined to see something-perhaps to see how much pain Varus could endure before he cried out.

Then, something inside Varus stirred. The corruption within his body was sensing his body being mutilated to pieces. A golden aura surrounded Varus, eating away at the wounds on his flesh and erasing them from his body, though the agony of the corruption healing him was just as torturous as the cuts Thresh slashed into him. Thresh, however, seemed pleased with this development and was eager to cut into Varus's body even more. Varus didn't even know how many times the Chain Warden cut into him, though each slice and recovering wound was pure torture.

Varus cried out, while Thresh laughed at the archer's misfortune. His torment only fueled the Chain Warden's sadism, and as the torture went on, Varus's lustrous brunette hair turned white, and when Thresh forced the corruption to heal Varus's arms and legs by inflicting the most cuts there.

Thresh laughed as he cut into Varus, while Varus cried out and wished for the torture to end. While at the highest peak of his pain, Thresh then stopped cutting into Varus and paused, lifting Varus by his white hair and tilted it so the Archer was looking up at him.

"How does it feel, Varus?"

Varus didn't answer.

Thresh shook him roughly by the head.

"How does it feel?"

"It hurts…" Varus said, now a broken man.

"Good. But the point of this isn't to just torture you endlessly. There is something that I wish to see, more than anything."

Thresh yanked Varus's head some more, before he made a large cut across Varus's throat. Blood spewed out in a sickening spray, before the archer fell limp and lifeless at the Chain Warden's feet. While Varus was dead, Thresh then imbued some of the souls in his lantern into Varus, so that the archer would become undead like himself. Once this happened, Varus's skin turned a light blue hue, a deathly pallor, and then the corruption started to manifest itself once more. It turned a sickly black, and tendrils of corruption surrounded Varus as Varus awoke into his new state, completely white eyes staring blindly at the Chain Warden.

"So soulmate," Thresh said in a slightly mocking tone, though his voice seemed gently when he caressed a gauntleted hand through Varus's hair. "How does it feel to be undead like me?"

"I hunger…" Varus said in a toneless voice, as the corruption tendrils started to wave menacingly around him. "Must…eat."

"And I have a prisoner prepared for you," Thresh said soothingly as he untangled Varus from the chains. They made their way from the chain room and towards one of the prison cells, where a frightened young woman lay huddled in a corner. Thresh threw her out carelessly, before saying, "Eat, Varus."

Varus stared hungrily at the woman, before the corruption tendrils snaked forward and wrapped tightly around the woman. The woman screamed as the corruption started to melt and meld into her skin, eating away at her flesh and dissolving her into a sustenance that Varus could eat in his undead state. What the corruption wanted, however, was the soul of the woman, and Varus ate her up greedily once the corruption completely overtook her and liquefied her.

Thresh watched his young charge with morbid fascination. He hadn't expected things to turn out as well as they did, though now he had Varus as his vassal by his side, to inflict destruction, pain, and terror upon the other Champions, the specter began to laugh endlessly, the dungeon corridors echoing and reverberating his laughter like a curse.

 **Author's Note:** Thresh/Varus is my odd OTP, but it's a ship that I love regardless. This is going to be a darker piece of fiction where Thresh has brought out the full corruption within Varus and unleashing him upon the other champions. This is another piece that is meant to be a longer work of fiction, though I guess it could also read as a one-shot. However, I think I would like to explore this piece more indepth, and perhaps write more about fully corrupted Varus and Thresh's shenanigans with one another. What do you think?


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Thresh calculated what to do next. He would show the other champions his magnificent masterpiece. After all, art something to be shared with in the world; decadent in its beauty, of life foiled and mocking the gaze of God with unholy blasphemy. He chuckled to himself. Varus would make a suitable companion, he felt; and a great tool to use for his bidding. Thresh took special favor of this particular victim; mainly because of the corruption inside of him. There was beautiful lyricism in his death, wasn't it? The poets and angels would weep about it. Oh, how he loved tears. Making people cry. Making them hurt. Ripping their limbs off, smashing their skulls, carving their guts out.

"Thresh?" Varus said, making Thresh swim out of his reverie of carnage and bloodshed.

"Well, if it isn't my soul mate," Thresh said mockingly to Varus. "You will adjust to your new body soon. Now that you are no longer limited by the fragility of flesh, you will unleash an ultimate power that is beyond imagining."

"Have you planned this all along?"

"I choose my vassals very carefully," Thresh said. "I want you to assist me in gathering souls. There is something I wish to see…more than anything else."

Varus remained silent, waiting for Thresh to reveal what he desired.

"I just want to watch the world burn around me," Thresh said at last, to which Varus nodded. "I'm going to be opening up a lottery. To see who's soul I should take next. I've been afflicted by ennui as of late, but I think that this should stir things up in the League. Before people realize it, they will be disappearing one by one; and I can think of all the delicious torment that I can afflict upon them."

"If that is your wish, then it is my desire as well," Varus said after a long moment.

Thresh crooned to Varus, who in his now spectral form seemed to be feeding off his aura. It was a power that was better than money, power, and sex all rolled into one; it was a high that no druggie could attempt to achieve unless if they released their soul from the mortal boundary. Thresh basked in Varus's spectral aura, while Varus did the same to him. They were connected at a far intimate level than a normal couple; not that Thresh thought of them as something as lowly as boyfriends, but soul mates. Soul mates was a truer word, a purer word; a more poetic word. And Thresh liked poetic things very much.

"To determine the next champion that we kill," Thresh said. "We will do a lottery. Someone's name pops up in a lottery. We will stake them and kidnap them into my lair, and then torture and kill them together. I want you, Varus, to experience the full joys of massacre; the lovely chorus of screams that come down from your broken down prisoners. I'm not just satisfied with killing a bunch of nameless nobodies. I want to kill Chamnpions."

"I will do as you wish," Varus said.

"We will release them from their mortal bodies," Thresh said. "They will understand true ascension; being free from their flesh prison. Oh, how delightful it will be."

"Why didn't you just kill me, Thresh?" Varus asked, before Thresh considered it.

"You're right, I could've just killed you on the spot instead of going through all this trouble," Thresh said. "I guess it was because I was bored. I like to make each of my victims something different, a tribute to my masterpieces. Let me show you the trophy room, Varus…"

With that, Thresh led Varus to the trophy room that he spoke of, which was full of multilated corpses that were posed in bizarre ways. Thresh came up to one and showed a girl in an erotic pose with her eyes turned inward. Another man was shown to with his head blown off. There were other such disturbing and macabre displays of grim horrors. Yet Varus didn't make a comment about it, simply looking at the corpses in morbid fascination.

"You had it in you to kill," Thresh said to Varus. "I've seen what you did to those Noxian soldeirs when your precious home was destroyed. Ruthless, cold, destructive. It was beautiful. You were like a demon, with your bows and arrows raining down on your opponents. Striking all their vital areas. These two trophies in particular, ah, the girl in that pose. She was so obsessed with herself that I turned her eyes inward, and put her in a demeaning pose to show that she's nothing but an object. The man with his head blown off; well, I gave him a choice. He could live or he could die. He chose to kill himself after I was through with him."

Thresh laughed with a certain morbidity.

"Well then, soul mate…shall we begin our work?"

Varus nodded, and thus began the tale of their dark descent.


End file.
